Washing The Stones: Selected Poems 1975-1995 by Maude Meehan
Watsonville, CA: Papier-Mache Press, 1996
240 pages, $13.00, paper
Reviewed by June Owens
In Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus writes,"And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."To apply so powerful a reference as Aeschylus to Maude Meehan's third book,Washing The Stones is not too remote--for wisdom, she shows us, is not our birthright. It is earned. From the opening piece, Mothers and Daughters, we move slowly through poems of intense beauty and despair of which Aeschylus spoke; we experience her underlying sorrow, coming at us as it does in many shapes and, at length, wisdom.Twenty years have gone into the making of Washing The Stones, a thick book of one hundred seventy-one poems of a consistent and individual voice. As much as one hesitates to describe a poetic voice as "tender" and "gentle"--particularly if that voice is a woman's--that is what these poems are. Meehan reminds us that in tenderness there is passion and in gentleness, strength.
To be unmoved by her poems about her aged and slowly wasting mother, is to be unmoved by anything. They are lovely, patient, frightening as Meehan struggles to work through her own subdued but excruciating pain:
"Days later, when the long familiar rooms
are echo empty, we wheel her
to the ambulance that waits. She gives
no backward glance, but sits, so small
yet somehow regal, and clasps the armrests
hoping to hide from us the tremor in her hands."Although many of her lines are short length-wise, her use of language is rich, full of controlled power and clarity:
"You said my sons were drifting
Times proved you wrong you know
Fearful, you saw them drift
Joyful, I watched them flow" (Semantics);"Circular
currents
swirl
draw
scattered
fragments" (Workshop);"My least twig
Knows the strength
of my branches
My fruit is bittersweet
I bloom
Again and again
with my old rhythm
I defy the seasons" (Woman Tree).Maude Meehan is in her seventh decade and, while much of today's poetry dies as quickly as it is printed, its ink fades as soon as the page is turned, Meehan's mature, sensitive and, yes, sensual songs of fierce love, compassion, loss and gain will last. Joining Meehan and her two grandsons as they ritualistically scrub gravestones in the family plot with joy, we see life touched at its center, wisdom at its core:
Questions follow about burial
and death, but before long,
their interest turns to small boy
talk, their treble voices
livening this resting place.
Above the site a canopy of trees
displays tight buds, soon to unfurl
just as these sturdy blood-kin boys
are opening, as side by side
with care we wash the stones
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